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The Way It Was - Telling the Safe Haven Story

The Way It Was - Telling the Safe Haven Story - 001

The Way It Was
Telling the Safe Haven Story
The Way it Was in previous issues
Edited by Robert Peterson
Scouting in a World War II Refugee Troop
Belonging to a Boy Scout troop or a Cub Scout pack inside a New
York State emergency refugee shelter helped young Holocaust
survivors learn to become Americans.
One of the most
unusual troops in
the history of the
Boy Scouts of
America was
Troop 28 of
Oswego, N.Y., in
1944-46.
Its 24 Scouts were
all survivors of the
Holocaust that
decimated
Europe's Jews
before and during
World War II
(1939 to 1945).
Six million Jews
and thousands of other minorities were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany in
extermination camps or worked to death or starved in concentration camps.
Some Jews escaped to other countries in advance of the Nazi blitzkrieg; a few reached safety in
Britain and the United States. Immigration quotas restricted the number of people from each
country who could be admitted to the United States, and only a small number of people were
allowed to enter compared with the number of applicants.
But in June 1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to allow a thousand of those refugees
to enter the country outside the quota limit, as "cargo." Two months later, 982 refugees from 18
countries arrived at Fort Ontario, a deactivated Army base in Oswego on the shores of Lake
Ontario. Ralph Stauber, the state department representative who was responsible for the refugees,
traveled with them from Naples and delivered them to the camp. Ruth Gruber, a special assistant
to the Secretary of the Interior who also accompanied the refugees to America from Italy, later
chronicled her experiences in a book, Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II
Refugees and How They Came to America.
FREEDOM AND FENCES
Troop 28 in Oswego, N.Y., came into being largely due to the efforts of
Scoutmaster Harold D. Clark (in uniform, in middle row, third from right). Walter
Greenberg, a refugee from Italy, is in the front row, second from left.
Photograph Courtesy of Walter Greenberg
Approximately 90 percent were Jewish. Among them was Walter Greenberg, an 11 -year-old
native of Italy whose family had been fleeing the Germans for much of his young life. (As an
adult, Greenberg became a filmmaker, and his most recent project is a traveling exhibit about the

The Way It Was
Telling the Safe Haven Story
The Way it Was in previous issues
Edited by Robert Peterson
Scouting in a World War II Refugee Troop
Belonging to a Boy Scout troop or a Cub Scout pack inside a New
York State emergency refugee shelter helped young Holocaust
survivors learn to become Americans.
One of the most
unusual troops in
the history of the
Boy Scouts of
America was
Troop 28 of
Oswego, N.Y., in
1944-46.
Its 24 Scouts were
all survivors of the
Holocaust that
decimated
Europe's Jews
before and during
World War II
(1939 to 1945).
Six million Jews
and thousands of other minorities were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany in
extermination camps or worked to death or starved in concentration camps.
Some Jews escaped to other countries in advance of the Nazi blitzkrieg; a few reached safety in
Britain and the United States. Immigration quotas restricted the number of people from each
country who could be admitted to the United States, and only a small number of people were
allowed to enter compared with the number of applicants.
But in June 1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to allow a thousand of those refugees
to enter the country outside the quota limit, as "cargo." Two months later, 982 refugees from 18
countries arrived at Fort Ontario, a deactivated Army base in Oswego on the shores of Lake
Ontario. Ralph Stauber, the state department representative who was responsible for the refugees,
traveled with them from Naples and delivered them to the camp. Ruth Gruber, a special assistant
to the Secretary of the Interior who also accompanied the refugees to America from Italy, later
chronicled her experiences in a book, Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II
Refugees and How They Came to America.
FREEDOM AND FENCES
Troop 28 in Oswego, N.Y., came into being largely due to the efforts of
Scoutmaster Harold D. Clark (in uniform, in middle row, third from right). Walter
Greenberg, a refugee from Italy, is in the front row, second from left.
Photograph Courtesy of Walter Greenberg
Approximately 90 percent were Jewish. Among them was Walter Greenberg, an 11 -year-old
native of Italy whose family had been fleeing the Germans for much of his young life. (As an
adult, Greenberg became a filmmaker, and his most recent project is a traveling exhibit about the